Viaduct winter league , rnd 1

Breakfast at lillypool this morning , under the New tenants. Not to bad hopefully with a bit of tweaking and a bit more speed it should be ok.
Just about got to the fishery in time for the draw, which I did for our team,  we ended up with Clint on 123, more miss than hit of late, Clayton on 87, always a chance of a few on the lead which is right up his street, me on 59 which can be a good skimmer peg but this year the skimmer havnt really shown on this side of the lake, Tim on peg 1 so a day spent mainly down the edge for carp, and lastly Ron on 11, always a chance of a carp on the wag or lead, and its a good skimmer peg, but not as good as the ones behind the island , generally.
Back to my swim and two pole rigs, one for meat under the tree to my left, normally a banker for at least one animal, even in cold weather, but with the lakes being frozen over on Saturday this may not be the case today, also a rig to target the lakes good skimmers over groundbait at 14 mtrs. And a wag rod to fish meat or corn at about 25 mtrs, company wise I had Steve Tucker on 60 and Anton page on 57.
At the start I fed several balls on the pole line , cupped some meat down the edge , then started on meat on the wag.
As did Steve and Anton, I fully expected a bite early doors but 40 mins in and with no indications I was reaching for the pole, Chris Davis on 61 had a good fish straight away on meat on the long pole and mat Parsons on 64 and Jason Radford on 66 were both into fish early on.
Back on my pole line and my first fish was a 6oz skimmer, and that was my last skimmer on the pole, after that it was down to small roach, by now several carp had been caught mainly on the wag, this is a float only section so no leads flying all over the lake.
So it was back out on the wag with meat on, still no bites for but tucks managed a couple on his punched colony, and Chris Davis added another on the wag, I eventually had a bite but it was fouled, I played it hard for a while and really expected to get it out, but it came off, I decided to rest it a bit and had a look down the edge, after a few mins the float went under, but not what I would say properly, and it turned out to be fouled again, it came out from under the tree very calmly, then decided the far side of the lake was much more attractive, so that's where it went , stealing my rig at the same time.
So another margin rig procured and plumbed, then back out on the wag , but with corn this time, I did have two quick carp on it for over 20lb but apart from a good skimmer later in the match that was my lot for the match really, Anton and me struggled, but next door tucks gave a proper shoeing ending up with 7 carp on the wag with polony on the hook, Dan squire on 56 also started catching, his wag was landing one side of the rope and mine the other, he was getting liners and bites ,and mine sat motionless, as did antons, who was casting more towards him, he did manage to snare one but that was his lot. Mat Parsons on the monk (64) had caught all match. So that was our lake winner.
1st on the day was new guru signing Ben haggard on peg 16 spring with 16 carp for 140.15, he caught on the lead out to the island on various baits
2nd mat Parsons 130.5
3rd Andy nestle on 131 with 93.7
4th Mark Brennan on 112  with 85lb
5th Fabio on 75.5 on 128
6th Steve Tucker on 60 with 71.5, he did have over 76lb , shame it was all in one net so he was only awarded 70lb, that error cost him £80 in the pools, these fish are bigger than you think sometimes.
First in silver's went to j Allen of frenzee black on 116 with 16.4 of skimmers
Second in the silver's Mike Williams on 68 with 16lb of f1 perch and skimmers,
Going to have a match at Landsend on Thursday, so ring or txt me on 07974807941 to book in.